London fields
by Mrs Fruitcake
Summary: A junkie and a dealer lie dead in a field and Gene's glad the 'scum' are taking care of themselves for once. But Alex discovers the murders are connected to a wider mystery. GALEX set after episode 8. Please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

**This is the first in a series of six connecting stories I've written about A2A. The stories follow one big plot arc so if you like them, start here :)**

**I owe a large debt of gratitude to ThisisZircon for beta-ing this story. Thank you :)**

_**I**_

"_Take me out tonight … take me anywhere, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care." The Smiths._

The past **is** another country, she thought as she yawned into the flickering television, and the dignified man reading the evening news seemed to yawn back. With his curt voice and the twitching shuffle of the papers as he moved onto a new story, she could hardly wait for him to end the bulletin.

Outside her flat, London - centre of the world - dozed. The streets were empty and she could see the occasional nodding worker stand up from their desk in the office blocks surrounding her, filling a lit window for a minute as he put on a coat, a scarf, even a hat sometimes. Soon the only glow on the street emanated from Luigi's sign. The London she knew – silver and green, always brilliantly lit by some invisible art director, so noisy she couldn't think without music in the back of her head – the city was waiting to be born again. Here on the same streets thirty years back it seemed all shuffling sighs, brick and concrete, old wallpaper that hadn't given up the ghost yet.

Worst of all downstairs … the pastel murals, the candlelight and World War Two jokes. The whole team would be down there, and for the whole night if they weren't desperately holding out for their next pay packets. Alex knew if she stepped outside her door and walked down the stairs, Luigi would greet her by pouring a hasty jug of Chianti for the "signorina", and the gang would look up from their table. The noise would not diminish for a second, but Chris and Ray and Shaz and the rest would note her presence.

_They think I'm a moody cow. And crazy. They wish I'd just transfer out._

She didn't care. _I wish I __**could**__ transfer out._

Alex put on her white jacket and made her way down the stairs as Luigi changed the music in the tape deck and a song she'd heard for many nights began – a heart-breaking love song to a girl from Venice who haunted the regretful singer every time he stepped outside his door. Well, it was heart-breaking if you understood Italian and longed for the bridges of the Rialto.

She passed into the candlelit café.

Oh yes, there he was, as always sitting apart from the team, tapping the cigarette into an ash-tray, unimpressed by the jokes flying back and forth. After a while, not even listening to the rest of them, looking through them. _He's waiting for me_, she thought.

It was an awareness Alex ignored most of the time: the fact that here or at CID he hardly looked at her, rarely spoke except to issue an order. He'd asked her out once. And despite the innuendo and smut … the idea that her boss wanted to take her out, get through a whole dinner even though he appeared to find much of what she had to say exasperating, yes get through the ritual of dinner just so he could cop a kiss at her front door and invite himself in - it had floored her.

But after that one dinner Hunt had backed off, a very neat reversal in fact.

Still, she sensed that when she and Hunt were in the same room, he knew exactly where she was at any one time, was interested in who she spoke to, and monitored whether she smiled or frowned.

The fact that Gene could hide it so well, or cover it with a crass come-on, would flatter her momentarily. But then, why pursue it?

For the past few days she had stopped every now and then to look down at her hand, almost in amazement. Beyond imagining, she could almost feel that very hand in his as the red balloon skimmed off skyward. And she would say again to herself, "It was _you_."

But then her mind swept around to the obvious: _I was shot. I am lying on a filthy blanket over rotten beams and the tide is making the pier sway beneath me. I am near death and my mind is making this up. I cannot escape this grey and brown stew that my mind has created, and this is not real. Molly is real, she's waiting for me. I have no idea how many minutes have passed there, but she will be worried. Entering into some cat and mouse game with him would only keep me from finding a way back._

_**This**__ is not real._

Hunt would have told her to snap out of it, seeing the funk she'd worked herself into tonight.

Alex didn't give him the chance, because she walked straight through the entrance, out the door and up the steps onto the street and the autumnal Wednesday evening.

* * *

"Quite the tableaux," the forensics man Gilbert said, leaning down to poke the body with his gloved finger. He looked up, his duffel coat shifting heavily around him in the cold sun. "DCI Hunt, doesn't it feel like we've been here before?"

_Tableaux? Twat._ "Yeah, junkie and dealer. I'm just glad this sod took out the dealer as well before he shuffled off this mortal coil," Hunt enunciated the last five words carefully, and stepped over the corpse's head to a second figure, still lying under a sheet and waiting his turn with Gilbert.

Ray squatted to lift the sheet from the second body's face. "It was only matter a time before this one ended up on the slab."

"Yes, Raymondo. But I was so sure that little chat you and I had with him last week in the cells would set him on the right path." He felt like giving the body of Delbert Blyth a good kicking for forcing him away from his lounge and the Saturday afternoon match. The mouthy little dickhead couldn't have waited until Monday before blowing a hole through that junkie's stomach?

Blyth had been paroled from the Scrubs not three weeks before for his second dealing conviction, and it seemed he had immediately gone back to working this endless field of scrubby, untended grass, concrete pilings, and smashed-up trolley carts. CID had already picked him up once on a routine drive through the area, but they'd let Blythe off with a warning. He was one of those tricky little fuckers that made you like him just a bit, despite the string of dealing convictions. He always had a story about sorting his pathetic life out. In fact, it was hard to shut him up – he seemed to like talking to them – and they were relieved to fling him back on the streets.

Hunt squinted up into the damp clouds as the sun dipped behind the haze. The field was extensive, a huge up-and-down expanse surrounded on three sides by tall blocks of flats. Behind him the fourth end of the field straggled out into scrub and up a short slope onto a road. How many eyes had stared out from those flats as this junkie murder went down? How many people cheered as the dealer got his, and the junkie too?

"Hey up, who invited her?" Ray's thumb was jabbing her way again. He had a special thumb jab for her. Hunt glanced just once at Alex's slow descent from the shoulder of the road down to the field. Under the violet sky her dark hair framed her white face and the wind whipped it savagely. Drawing close after a few minutes of picking her way through the rubble in her ridiculous white boots, her look dared him to have a go.

"What's this?" Alex asked, all business and drawing a small notepad from the back pocket of her jeans.

"What's this is that while you have been absent without leave, Bolls, drug dealers and junkies have been topping each other in exotic locales." He waited, toe of his boot tapping on a piece of rubble. "Now care to explain why you didn't turn up for work on Friday?"

"How about we investigate this crime scene?"

"I don't think London's mouthiest dealer Delbert Blyth and this scabby junkie are going anywhere! You **have** time to explain."

"I don't want to." Alex pushed past him and knelt down beside the second body, identity unknown.

"Shot in the stomach," Gilbert said to her. _State the obvious as always_, Hunt thought; the lower front of the dead man's shirt and army-issue parka were sodden with rusting blood. Gilbert showed Drake all the points of interest he'd found, carefully lifting the arms to display the untidy ring of track marks, and remarking on the noticeable flecks of white spittle around the mouth.

The junkie's face wore a joyous smile and Hunt caught her looking away for a second. Yeah, it was quite revolting, he agreed.

She and Gilbert moved onto the body of Delbert Blyth, half of whose dark handsome face had been obliterated by the junkie's bullet.

Hunt grew restless after a quarter of an hour of their consulting together, and broke Gilbert away from her. "I ain't wasting any more time on this. Write it up and we can all get back to our weekends."

The violet sky was darkening, seeping some of the ugliness of the field and the flats away, and Hunt began the walk back to the Quattro, parked over on the shoulder of the road where he'd judged it least likely to be hit by any fool exiting too fast from a nearby roundabout. _Sick of this dump. _He'd call the plods out to join Chris and Ray in a door-to-door in those scummy blocks of flats, and then he would resume his place in front of the television with a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

"Hunt, wait!"

That command summoning him back. "Ohhh," he groaned and stopped without turning around. "No!" he yelled out.

"Hunt!" she insisted. "There's blood over here, and it's not … I don't think it's from the two victims."


	2. Chapter 2

_**II**_

"Right, get out there to that Bathurst Estate and wrap this rubbish case up. Talk to anyone home in the tower blocks, but let me clear now: no, I am not doling out pub money for information."

Hunt dismissed the plods and detectives and re-entered his office. The black and white lights in the CID ceiling flickered on and off randomly, either power failings in the grid or the lights were in a death rattle. Maybe it was the bloody brass trying to save money again. They'd already started their economy drive sneakily by instructing the cleaners to not bother cleaning the desks too thoroughly. As Hunt picked up a whisky glass, he noticed a ring of sticky grime and dust on the shelf.

Anyway, the epileptic lights gave a clubby, tense atmosphere to the place which it didn't need.

Out there beyond his door, there was bloody Drake penning all over the whiteboard again. She'd picked on Granger again for "brain storming" and was excitedly jabbing the pen at the air to illustrate her point. Granger sat on the edge of a desk, facing away from him, but he could tell by the shrug of her back that she was puzzled though trying valiantly to humour Drake.

A right teenager when she was enthusiastic like this. She looked so fresh and translucent… not a word that came to him often, but he lived every day now with the unwanted tender feelings and thoughts that washed across him. Followed swiftly by irritation that she seemed to make such a point of – he poured the drink – pissing him off.

It embarrassed him that, with these feelings, he himself might be translucent. _Or izzit transparent?_ This constant sinking in his chest and gut. He was reasoning his way through it, but it was painful.

_Oh fuck, oh fuck you Mary – have another drink._

Jabbing that pen again so happily. It was a side to her **he** didn't often see – with him lately Drake was sullen, or dismissive, or bantering. Pulling a fag from the packet in his inside pocket, Hunt knew that if he opened the door and stepped out the spell would be broken and she would slide away to her desk again, or even home. Yeah she did that now alright, ever since they'd witnessed the death of those Prices and the disappointment of those stupid ideas of hers that she would leave and return to her daughter.

Hunt didn't dwell on that. He had no idea where she'd been on the Friday just gone and it annoyed him. He admitted to himself as his cigarette burned down at the edge of his mouth that, yes, he liked to be in control. Even if she played the renegade in this station, he had the right to know where she was during work time.

And it irked him that she'd made such a show of bypassing the team at Luigi's the other night. Showing all over again her reluctance to be here and her desire to remain apart from the rest of them. Sometimes he just wanted to ask her what effing superior station or unit had she come from that looked down on the kind of respectable police work done here at Fenchurch East.

He could picture Ray and the others grumbling. _"She doesn't respect the Guv, she comes and goes as she pleases, and because her tits have gone to his brain, he doesn't mind." _

"I **do** mind." Hunt swigged back the Scotch, and opened the office door. "What's this about then?"

* * *

Drake's ideas were far-fetched as usual. She'd drawn arrows and circles all over the whiteboard that looked far more like football play strategies than detective work.

"Oh...okay," she said as Hunt sat down and Granger swiftly took the opportunity to get back to her typing before hostilities recommenced.

"Start from the beginning," he said evenly. The tension between them always made him louder and meaner than he actually meant to be.

"I was just trying to imagine how the scene went down," Alex mutt+ered, looking sideways at him as she rubbed the whiteboard clean. "I **know** you think it's a simple case of junkie and dealer, but there are too many conflicting pieces of evidence. The scene is telling a different story from just the junkie, whoever he is, shooting Delbert Blyth and vice versa."

The lights dimmed for a few seconds. Yes, definitely the grid on the blink. "Enlighten me."

"Well...." She had to stretch up to the top edge of the whiteboard to find space. She drew three circles, and the low sweetness in her voice as she pulled him into this schema made him thoughtful. "It's interesting, like a very simple game theory scenario where you have to look at all the moves the players make, and their self-interest in doing so. But I guess it's more complicated because-"

"In English if you don't mind." Had anyone ever just sat down and explained to her that the average man, sitting there while she turned her delightful arse to him or bent over to reveal the top of her breast … had anyone ever explained that the average man felt...? He quickly crossed his legs and arms and tried to make sense of the circles.

"We have Delbert Blyth and the other victim, who apparently shot each other, but then we have a third person who must have been wounded but escaped the field alive. They left a blood trail that was obvious. We don't have to examine the blood type more closely to see that." She paused to let it sink in. "But who shot who?"

"Who cares? Two dead scum is a result."

"No, no." Alex drew a crude bullet over to the left of the circle representing the junkie. "The only bullet shell at the scene from the junkie's gun was found here. And Mr Gilbert called just before about the post-mortem. The man was completely high when he died. He had a lot of heroin in his system. It's highly unlikely that he would have had the capability to aim and shoot Blyth, and he didn't… godsake, would a diorama with pink wafers convince you?"

"Who shot the junkie then?"

"Delbert Blyth. But only once, and Delbert's gun showed he fired twice."

Hunt listened to a few minutes more of this. It didn't make a lot of sense, but she had managed to fit some rather inconvenient pieces of evidence into her scenario, and now that he thought about them he couldn't dismiss her questions out of hand. Oh yes, of course she was analysing again, and no doubt she'd start on with the "I'm in control" insanity soon too.

Granger threw him a sly look of sympathy over the top of the typewriter and Chris shuffled silently to his desk.

"Bolly, what are you waiting here for then? I guess we'd better go back to that paradise and find more evidence." He went to fetch his coat, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

"I can take Shaz instead. No need to bother you if you think my idea is crazy."

"Wrong, Bolly. I think** you're** crazy, but your idea here is probably worth looking into."

But he backed off. He'd grown so used to spending half his day driving her around in the Quattro, it just seemed natural.

_You're not that subtle, _he thought_. I get it. You're pushing me away._

_Fine, stuff it._

He motioned to Granger to go with the DI.


	3. Chapter 3

_**III**_

Plods spread out across the scrubland, gingerly poking sticks into the many half-filled holes and twitchy patches of tall grass. Across the expanse Biro and Lewis could be seen going door to door in one of the Bathurst Estate towers. DI Drake lifted the scene tape for Shaz and they went straight to the centre, the outlined paint figures of Delbert Blyth and the other as-yet unidentified victim.

Shaz followed Drake as she carefully stepped around the scene. They were silent, and Shaz wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to be doing other than not disturb anything. Still, she was chuffed to be out with Drake, even though she generally agreed with the rest of them that the Detective Inspector was unpredictable and moody. If half the time you couldn't understand what she was on about ... well she was kind anyway. Drake had paid five times more attention to her than DCI Hunt, and without yelling.

Here they were, two girls investigating without Chris or Ray enforcing the strict team hierarchy. _Me at the bottom of the chain_, Shaz thought as glanced over a mound of dirt at the bottom of a broken concrete piling; she looked more closely. DI Drake was humming softly to herself and turning around in slow circles, hands on hips, so Shaz picked up a stick and probed the mound a bit. It was loose dirt for such a deserted hard clay field. She flicked the dirt away and leaned down, uncomfortable as it was to bend in a skirt. After a minute she had uncovered a plastic bag, and soon found the bag itself covered a rolled-up magazine.

"Ma'am."

Drake was beside her straight away, and started to scrape away all the dirt with her hands carelessly. They smiled at each other without saying anything, because this was like digging up buried treasure, wasn't it?

Soon the DI slid on some gloves and untied the knotted plastic bag. It was a porno mag, but they ignored the breasts, lace and tanned flesh, and flicked through the pages. A couple of blunts fell out, then a sheet of paper. They both shifted and bent closer, and Shaz hoped the plods hovering nearby kept to their business.

"Wow, that looks really old," she exclaimed, reaching for the sheet of paper. DI Drake took it first.

"It's parchment."

The paper was thick, very discoloured and mottled with water stains. "It's creepy."

"It's … amazing." Drake's hand moved over the thick sheet, and rested on a line at the bottom. "No," she breathed. It looked like a signature and her voice was breathy as if she couldn't quite believe what she was saying. "Looks like 'William Shakespeare'. I'm not wrong, am I?"

They both laughed; it was absurd. But there it was. This old piece of parchment, with his jerky signature. Above the signature was a poem, all short lines and long words.

"Can you make the rest of this out at all?" Shaz asked.

"Not really. Let's not leap to any conclusions."

No, it was hard to read the words at all – the letters slanted weirdly as if the person writing them didn't want to leave space inside them. Drake slid the sheet back into its magazine and back into the plastic bag.

"What do you think the Guv'll say about this?" She smiled broadly at Shaz. "Let's go tell him what this junkie versus dealer shoot-out is turning into."

* * *

"And did you never go to university, Gene?" Alex asked as they crossed one of the open quad areas of King's College the next day.

Surprisingly Hunt felt quite cheery on their short walk from the Quattro, even stopping, hands in trouser pockets, to admire one of the Victorian Gothic buildings on the campus. "Not even to pick up a bird, Bolly." He glanced at an address he'd written down to confirm that yes, the squat 1960s building with its pebble-dash frontage and empty, inaccessible balconies, was the School of English. "No wait, I tell a lie. I did drink at a university pub once that happened to be on me way home from a match. Man City caned that one."

"Yeah, I can just picture you buying all the students a round." They entered the building lobby.

"It's a bit dead though. Not what I pictured academic life to be all about." No one reading or talking on the many seating areas outside, nobody in the building now.

"You're disappointed because there's no topless girls dancing in the fountains or protesting against Margaret Thatcher, I'm so sorry."

The parchment was enclosed in a new plastic evidence bag, evidence Hunt now carried. Bolly had rushed into his office first thing in the morning, before he could even hang his coat up. Practically tripped over herself to show him this dirty scrap.

He had decided to establish what in fact the parchment was. It was an odd crime indeed if three people had shot each other in that field, and one of them had buried but not snuck back to claim this supposedly Shakespearean parchment. This "potential national treasure" as she'd called it.

God he hoped not. No one at CID, obviously, had any idea of what the parchment was or even cared, Except Drake. His head hurt from having to listen to her hypotheses.

To shut her up, here they were at the university to talk with one of the English department's several internationally renowned Shakespearean scholars.

* * *

Alex watched him as the lift swayed slowly to its destination. Yesterday afternoon, when she and Shaz had got back to CID, Hunt hadn't been there and he hadn't been contactable. Almost bursting with the need to tell about this development, she'd immediately scouted out the bookies down the street, sent Shaz to find Chris and Ray, and even called Luigi. It had then occurred to her that she had no idea what Hunt might do with his time when he wasn't at work or down the pub.

No DCI Hunt anywhere. So she'd sat on a bar-stool at Luigi's for a good two hours in the early evening, and the team had drifted in behind her. Every time the door had opened, a Chris or Ray or another of those CID blockheads would arrive. Eventually she'd wanted to just scream. Finally at half-past nine Hunt had appeared, just as she'd set her mind on heading back up the stairs to her flat.

"It's the Guv!" the team had greeted him, but he'd stopped at the door to hold it open for a woman entering after him. Alex could tell looking from the team back to him that they hadn't know who she was either. The woman wore a cerise-coloured silk dress (or some imitation of silk anyway) and matching combs in her hair. She'd handed her neatly pressed white linen jacket to a perplexed Luigi, but kept her clutch purse with her.

Her hair. It was ashen blonde and feathery – maybe it was really grey because Alex had thought she must be at least be forty years' old – but she took good care of it. Everything about her matched, was neat, delicate even.

Alex had slid off the stool a little and stayed there, but Hunt had merely met her eyes steadily and then moved through the restaurant. The woman trailed after him, and Hunt had offered this person a seat while Luigi hovered to take their drinks order.

Flummoxed Alex had taken two of the steps back up to her flat, but stopped once the shadows of the staircase hid her from the restaurant floor. _That's my chair_, she'd thought. _That's my drink he's pouring.

* * *

_

Now she was the one trailing him through the university, itching to bring up the subject of the ashen blonde lady, mysterious lady. That morning she'd even hovered in the tea room as Ray and Chris briefly discussed "the Guv's new bird". Inconveniently they'd broken off as soon as Alex'd moved to the sink to rinse her tea mug.

And Hunt was saying nothing now except to ask at the English department reception for "a pointy head to talk to on police business". Typically they hadn't made an appointment ahead and the receptionist dithered for a few minutes, phoning various people and evidently finding no one willing to talk with the Metropolitan Police.

A middle-aged woman finally came down the hall of bunker-like offices to greet them, eyeing them dubiously but showing them into her room all the same. She had an air about her as if they were students and she was keeping them from important work.

Dr Barbara Bade's chin wobbled slightly over her fawn turtle neck jersey as Hunt leaned back in the chair she'd offered and held up the plastic evidence bag. Evidently she wore a lot of angora because fibres seemed to be all over the chairs in her office. Alex began brushing them off her jeans.

"I can't read this, but my DI here tells me it's a poem. And the only poems I know involve young ladies from Carlisle."

"I'm sorry, as I mentioned I have to be in my next lecture in five minutes," Dr Bade said as they sat before her and she sank into her chair and touched her overheads distractedly.

"Fine, I just need your opinion on whether it's fake or the real deal." Hunt handed her the bag. "You can see it through the plastic right?" He breezed through an explanation of the crime scene, the parchment blah blah blah in barely thirty seconds, and Alex held her hand to her mouth to hide a smile.

Barbara Bade looked baffled, but she held up the bag close to her nose. _You could look more bloody excited about it,_ Alex thought. _Helloooooo, it's Shakespeare._

"I really couldn't say what this in five minutes or probably even five hours. I could take a look if you'll leave this with me. Is there any hurry?"

Hunt checked his watch. "I promised myself I wouldn't spend any longer than twenty minutes here … so yes."

Alex leant forward, partially obscuring the woman's view of Hunt to forestall any further rudeness. "Dr Bade, can we leave this with you? It's very exciting to us, but could also be crucial to a murder case we're working on. Can you please keep it to yourself? Don't share this with your colleagues. It would be very inconvenient and potentially damaging to our investigation if it went any further than you at this stage."

"Yes of course," Dr Bade replied. "But I only wish Alfred Sable were here. He's a professor here, and his specialty is the manuscripts. He found a first folio you know."

"Get him in here then." Hunt slapped his hands on his knees and made to rise.

"He's convalescing from an illness," she said. "We're a bit worried about to tell you the truth. Never missed a day in his office or at the research library until...." Barbara Bade finished her sentence as Alex followed Hunt out the door with an embarrassed "thank you".


	4. Chapter 4

_**IV**_

"I'm surprised you didn't want to stay longer, Drake. Bet you were feeling right at home." They were back in the lobby of the School of English and, even though they'd left the Quattro parked next to a group of students sitting in the gutter, he seemed in no hurry. "All the received pronunciation and firsts at Cambridge. Did that lady doctor's wobbling turkey neck take you right back?"

"Time for a class war, is it Gene?" she asked, but strangely the image of him leaning down to her ten-year-old self and calling her "little lady" came to her right there. What an odd time to think about that. Somehow the memory seemed so vivid it was almost as if she could feel his fingers about her hand.

She started as Hunt leaned in towards her suddenly, his hand grasping for her shoulder. "Hey, th-"

But he snatched something from beyond her, giving her a dark look. _Oh_. He'd ripped a notice off the bulletin board. They looked down at the face on the notice together: the dead junkie but without the unpleasant smile. It was a trespass notice, warning that the junkie, name of Philip Ridley-Parwit, was not allowed on any of the premises of King's College or, more widely, the University of London.

"I don't think the university'll get any more trouble from his direction," Hunt said.

* * *

"Not just a dirty, dead junkie. But a dirty, dead junkie student filth," Ray said.

"Is there any other kind?"

Within half an hour Viv had radioed back to the Quattro that Philip Ridley-Parwit had been a graduate student in English Literature at Kings College until two years ago when his unfortunate heroin habit had motivated him to steal repeatedly from student lockers and faculty members' offices. He had been barred from entering university premises and prosecuted. Last registered parole address: the fifteenth floor of the second Bathurst Estate tower, Enderby Block.

"Should've known really," Chris said from the backseat of the Quattro as they parked in a lane, two streets away from King's College. "Them students are the only ones wearing army parkas. And he had all them 'stop the bomb' and anarchist badges all over them."

"Did you see that straggly little beard he had too?" Ray flicked cigarette ash out the window. "Looked like pubes. They all want shooting."

"And he smelled like pubes," Chris added.

"Godsake, he smelled because the interior of his stomach was hanging out!" Alex whipped around in her seat to glare at them.

"Shut up all of you." Hunt also turned around. "Now this is going to be horrible, but it has to be done. I want to make a connection between that student twat and Delbert Blyth, and how that parchment whatsit fits into the picture. So as much as it pains me, don't go in there with all guns blazing. We're going to mingle with our young student friends and-"

Alex rolled her eyes, checked her hair in the rear-view. "Are we going to change into undercover?"

"No we are not."

"Then good luck 'fitting in'." She slid out of the car and slammed the door before Ray had the chance to follow.

A minute later the four of them entered The King's Men, past posters glued to the brick walls that advertised the final ever gig by We Are All Prostitutes. Hmmm, she thought. _Stranglers, yes. Stench of beer and marijuana, yes. _The bar itself was about as bare-bones-of-your-arse as it got: rickety tables and long damp benches to sit at, the paint on the walls an unappealing cream, the stage far too small to fit a four-piece band.

Ray sucked in a breath through his cigarette as he pushed his way through to a spare booth. "Bloody students … everywhere."

Yes it was packed; students turned away from their drinks to wonder in unison at why an outrageously good-looking young woman was taking a seat in a booth with three ugly copper scum. In this pub.

* * *

"I have never had so much trouble buying a ruddy drink." Hunt slammed the jug and glasses down on the table. "Drake, your C cups are getting the next round because it's the only chance of us being served again in this establishment."

Alex watched the steadily increasing stream of punters entering and leaving both the gents and ladies. _The toilets must be overflowing with blunts by now. _

"I'm not sure how we can achieve anything remotely useful." She sat, one long leg crossing another, and pushed the lager aside. Ignored the innuendo coming from their neighbouring booth, where five young men entertained each other by betting on which one of the filth had paid for her services for the night.

Hunt sent Chris for cigarettes and Ray to question the bar staff about Philip Ridley-Parwit. He pulled his chair closer and waited. She looked to him after a minute. A pink strobe light above their heads highlighted the cut bottle green glassiness of his eyes.

"Go on. Whatever you're dying to say."

"You must have spent time in plenty of student pubs, Bolly. Don't lie, we've all seen you put it away like a pro. Now you tell me, where should we start? With the kindly tykes behind you who have been complimenting your arse for ten minutes now?"

She turned her eyes to the portrait of Winston Churchill on the wall behind his head. "It's not as if I haven't heard worse at the Met … from you."

He lit a cigarette and let her stub it out before it reached his lips. "Go on, paint a picture of your student days for Uncle Gene. I'm thinking you, important ideas, noble thoughts, big piles of books, tight little shirt, jeans that don't-"

Chris knocked the table as he handed Hunt the new packet of cigarettes. "A bird over there wanted to know if I iron my jeans." He shook his head. "Oh, and I asked around outside and no one's seen the dead bloke for a few days."

Hunt's arm slipped around behind the back of Alex's chair as he told Chris to get back outside and ask if anyone had known Delbert Blyth. "It's not likely though," he told Alex, breathing almost into her hair he was so close. "Delbert's about as intellectual as Ray so I doubt he'd want to drink his pint to the sound of tossers reading their 'fight the power' poetry."

"And look around. See any black men in this pub?" She shoved his hand off the back of her chair.

"PAY UP RICHARD!" came a shout from the neighbouring booth. A kid in a beret popping up and down in his booth. "I told you Dirty Harry there's the punter. He's moving in for the kill!"

"Oh Gene." She turned away from him, put a hand against her forehead. "Why don't you just go and thump the table and crack some skulls so we can get out of here."

"Investigation takes time, Bolly. I've got all the time in the world tonight."

Before she could take stock of her thoughts she'd looked into his eyes. Too close. Didn't think before she spoke. "What, don't you have a date with that lovely lady with her lovely feather-cut hair?"

Maddening...he said nothing, put his thumb to his lip.

"Dirty bastard! Are you on duty, constable?"

He turned slowly to eye the five young men, who had now squeezed a couple of near-comatose young women into their booth. "Why yes I am."

From the impenetrable crown Ray and Chris appeared behind him, and Alex wearily followed as they dragged all five through tables, knocking over chairs and spilling pints, out the door into the smoky street. As she crossed the pub entrance, a hand on her arm stopped her, a thin young woman plucking at her jacket.

"They were asking about Philip," the woman said. Just a girl really, all bluish white skin and black Egyptian eye make-up. She was speaking so quietly that Alex had to bend down to hear her.

"Philip Ridley-Parwit," Alex nodded, feeling in her pockets for the photo of him, ignoring the doof doof sound of Ray gut-punching one of her young admirers.

"I knew something would happen to him," the girl said, with one bitter tear at the edge of her eye. There was a tension in her face, emotion being suppressed and bitten back. "Something bad?"

Alex was silent.

"He went around last week telling his friends he'd come into a lot of money and that he was going on the biggest trip of his life."

"Heroin? So he had a lot of money suddenly, and wanted to spend it all on heroin?"

The girl nodded, scratching her arms. "He said it would be the biggest treat. There's a lot of fools inside there," – gesturing back to The King's Men – "he was sick of the rubbish they were dealing him. He said he was waiting on this whole big pile of money to come through, and then he would buy some new stuff ...good gear... from this new man he'd never met before. Then he'd call me."

She sounded educated. Alex couldn't place the accent, but she'd met plenty of girls like her at her own school. They were goners as soon they met the right man … the wrong man. All their energy going into defending the memory of a loser.

"Was Philip your-?"

"Yes," she rejoined quickly. "Yes, and you'll hear mostly bad things about Philip, but he didn't cause half the trouble he's been accused of." The girl's look deepened; seemed about to crumple in despair. She was too thin and under-dressed for such a freezing night. Was she even aware he was dead? "He got kicked out of the university, but he still continued to study. I've never met anyone naturally brighter than him. We would sit up and he could just quote off whole plays. I can't … but I remember … tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..."

"Creeps in this petty pace from day to day until the last syllable of recorded time," Alex finished for her, smiling in embarrassment.

"Yes. That one, always." With such a sickly look on her face as she looked down at the ground. Was she out of it?

"Can you tell me, do you know how he came into so much money so suddenly?"

"No."

Alex believed this scratched-up little thing. She had the answer already anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

_**V**_

She'd never seen Hunt personally kick a door down before. Ray usually did it. But Ray and Chris weren't here and, she had to admit, the Guv had that cocky look down as he booted the door back off its lock. The knackered lock flew down the hall.

"Skill, not brutality," he said, nodded to her to get inside.

"It's not much of a security system," Alex murmured, stepping past him. "Not much of a door now either thanks to you."

Obviously the junkie hadn't exactly been sitting pretty up here on the fifteenth floor of the Enderby Block, Bathurst Estate. Her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the hallway. It was four o'clock, the night was creeping away from them and the flat was lit in silver-blue moonlight. Quiet here. No lights came on in other flats, no scramblings from the neighbours despite Hunt's how-do-you-do. They were alone, stepping through the remains of Philip Ridley-Parwit's life.

"Whoever tore this dump apart probably had to bloody tidy it up first." Hunt nudged the fridge open with his foot. Disgusting of course, as was the bedroom with its mattress on the floor, surrounded by dirty tea cups and bottles with candle remains sliding down their sides. An intruder had removed the slats in the little bathroom window and boosted himself through, then taken his time flinging the contents of the flat around.

The electricity didn't work, and the only illumination in the flat came from the moon, the Guv's lighter, and a candle she'd found next to the toilet.

"Wonder if they took their time because they knew he was dead," Hunt said. "Probably did it straight away because they knew we wouldn't find young Phil for a good while. Or maybe they'd sent him off with some cash to score from Delbert Blyth and knew they had the time to search the place."

In the lounge, the dead man had no shelves, but scattered around the floor were enough books to start a small village library. Alex bent over to examine some. "They're all annotated. He's read them all so carefully and made notes. I don't think he kept them on the floor. The books are much better looked after than anything else in this flat." She should have been exhausted, but she felt bright with the cold, the sneaking around.

* * *

They both stood at the window and looked down and out at the vast, uneven field where Philip had died with his last, greatest skag trip streaming through his veins. Cold lights illuminated the footpaths at the edges of the field backing onto the tower blocks, and in the distance lonely cars buzzed along the motorway to the roundabout.

As she turned, the candle she held flickered a yellow, unsteady light across the lounge wall and caught writing. She had a solemn look about her, like they were robbing a tomb.

"Look." She held the candle up and beckoned him over. Hunt stood behind her to read over her shoulder, too close again, he knew. A whole wall of messy writing, looped and dotted in permanent marker on the peeling white wallpaper.

"_Thou rememberest / Since once I sat upon a promontory,_

_And heard a mermaid on a Dolphin's back / Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,_

_That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,_

_To hear the sea-maid's music._

_That very time I saw,--but thou couldst not,-- Flying between the cold moon and the earth,_

_Cupid, all arm'd: a certain aim he took / At a fair vestal, throned by the west;_

_And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; _

_But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft / Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon; _

_And the imperial votaress passed on, / In maiden meditation, fancy-free."_

She'd read out loud the first two lines of the scrawled verse, and now she turned around. By candlelight her hair was so dark and falling about her face and her lashes cast delicate shadows on her cheek as she blinked at him. When she looked like this and when she reached out a hand to the wall … he drew in a hissing silent breath. She said with that soft voice, "Only a romantic would do that."

He felt sorry to have to speak. "A romantic, smelly, fully dead junkie did that. This flat stinks to high heaven and I cannot understand a bloody word of his hand-writing." _Or anything what she just read out._

"Isn't there a tiny part of you, Gene, that responds to this?" She jabbed the candle at the wall. "Some part of you that cares about more than tits, arse and beating up suspects?"

The way she said _Gene_ in that whispering firm voice. He put his hands in his coat pockets and had to walk away a little and he looked at the kitchen wall as he said, "Are you saying Shakespeare wasn't all about tits and arse?"

The candle flickered out.

* * *

"Shagged her?"

"Of course."

Alex slowed down past their desks – she'd been going out to interview room five but now deftly changed course and slumped down at her own desk, opened a file and pretended to read it.

"You sure he just didn't get..." Chris looked around and lowered his voice, motioned to his crotch. She shifted in her chair just a little closer. "You know, downstairs outside?"

Ray contemplated that for a moment. "Outside? How does that work? Is that why you're still a virgin, you div?" He flicked a fag end at the direction of Chris's head. "Am I going to have to sit at the end of your bed the first time you manage to get Granger in it and tell you what to do?"

"Shut it."

"Yeah," she breathed to herself. "Shut it."

Ray half-turned her way and raised his voice, just a little. God Ray was horrid sometimes. "He's been warming the bench for a while, but now the Guv is back on the pitch, threatening the goal yet again. That Lorna bird didn't stand a chance last night."

_Lorna. Lorna the lovely lady of the ashen locks._

She continued to pretend that the criminal history of Delbert Blyth held her full attention. A few minutes later the man under discussion entered the office and raised his eyebrows at the silence.

"I don't sense that work is being done. I've just had CS Paulson asking garbled-up questions about the Shakespeare Estates crimes. It's only a matter of time before he's clued in about what we're dealing with." Hunt stopped briefly by Drake's desk, tapping the phone to get her attention. "I'm out for the rest of the day so you can make sure this lot write up their reports on what the Estate rabble have been saying." She didn't look up and felt, rather than saw him shrug and go into his office to retrieve his coat.

"I hope that bird has recovered in time for round two," Ray nodded admiringly.

* * *

Alex, Shaz, Chris and Ray surveyed that silent wasteland again under the stars. The lights glowed dully from a thousand windows on the Bathurst towers. Televisions bounced shadows off a hundred living room walls. Even cooking smells – fatty dinner odours – reached them as they looked down at the edge of the field.

"I guess there's no time like the present." Alex clapped her hands together. _Wish I'd brought gloves along. _She ignored the fact that none of them were dressed for a night like this. "Right, we're going to keep a watch on that mound of dirt to see if anyone comes poking around. Let's-" Her words died in the roaring of the Quattro as it bulleted up onto the shoulder of the road.

Hunt stepped out. "I heard you were playing at lady detective again, Drake. What's a stake-out in the middle of this shit-hole supposed to achieve?"

She tried to suppress the wave of irritation at seeing the gloves on his hands and his great coat. Unlike them, he was properly dressed for the night-time temperature. "Obviously, the person who got away from this crime scene was probably the same one who had or would go through the dead man's flat. Maybe he, or she, suspects the parchment is still buried here. **Maybe **he'll, or she'll, return here to look for it." She didn't care that she was pissing them off by using the 'spell it out for the constructs' voice again. "Anyway … I thought you were otherwise occupied tonight, so I used my initiative. Probably a waste of time though, since your exhaust just announced to anyone in a five mile radius that the fuzz are here."

"Fuck off." He took a swig from a hip-flask. _Oh why didn't I think of that,_ she cursed. "Poor people aren't blind, Bolly. Up here you lot are about as undercover as Danny La Rue in the Sunday School Easter pageant."

"Well no, you-" For godsake, he was actually rattling her. "You go home then if you think this is a waste of time."

"Can I go home too. Ma'am?" Ray asked.

"No, no. I left you in charge so I'll play along." Hunt rubbed his hands together. "Let's split up and cover the spot where the ruddy poem was buried. Granger, you head back to Luigi's and pick us up a couple of those horrendous pizzas."

"No!" Alex whirled around on him. "This is getting ridiculous."

She saw the other four exchanging glances and Hunt motioned for Shaz to be off home instead. Chris and Ray looked on glumly as she drove away.

"Okay, Christopher-"

"I'll take Ray," Alex said quickly. She practically ripped at Carling's sleeve in her haste to get away and Ray stumbled after her down the short bank from the shoulder of the road to the field. They skirted the edge of it for a couple of minutes and found the remains of some concrete pilings to hide behind.

After half an hour of trying out various pieces of jagged concrete for a seat, she sank down next to Ray on the ground. He offered her a cigarette.

"You know I don't smoke, Ray." She said no to chewing gum too.

"Well it's going to be a long night for you then."

"Shhh!" She thumped his arm. Someone was coming. They pulled their feet up to their chests, hoping the gloom was enough to conceal them.

"Hiya!" Chris's cheery face appeared over the top of the concrete. "What a rubbish hiding spot, ma'am. I saw you from the road."

"Get back to yours then," she hissed. "We'll find a better one."

"Got a message from the Guv."

"That's what your **radio's** for.".

"Yeah well, but the Guv said I was to find you and then me and Ray need to go up to that Pardley-Turwit's flat and do surveillance from there."

_Oh really._

"It was an order," Chris said after she hadn't moved in a whole minute. "You're to go over to the Guv's position. He's staking out the underpass."

"He's watching the underpass or he's **in **the underpass?"

"Yeah." Chris motioned behind him careless, his mouth stuffed with pizza. "Oh yeah, **in **the underpass."


	6. Chapter 6

_**VI**_

Picking her way through the rubble Alex noted what a ridiculous surveillance position the underpass was. _He's really taking this seriously. _But at least it was a dark inky night and the wind had died down. All but one of the lights in the tunnel had been broken by some thug energetic enough to jump up with a hammer or piece of wood, and so Hunt was relatively well-hidden against the curving graffiti'd wall. He had a nice direct view of the dirt mound that had hidden the parchment although he was currently sitting against the curve of the underpass wall, looking down at his boots.

She drew up and looked through the tunnel to its end, where the path curved up and around to the road above them.

"The reason it's called an underpass is because people pass through it, you know. Just wanted to mention that in case we get discovered and you wonder why."

"We'll manage, Bolly."

Slowly she grew accustomed to the darkness and could now pick out more than the glow of his cigarette. Hunt didn't seem interested in conversing so she found herself pacing up and down, checking the curved path to the road and then the field.

What would this broken, useless field become in the future? It seemed so odd to have such a large expanse right in the middle of this part of London. Surely it had been taken by a property developer like Danny Moore. Hopefully they'd knocked down the Bathurst Estates too in the future and made homes fit for human beings.

The odd car passed overhead and then a truck: it was two o'clock now. The truck brought a rush of sound to her ears before the silence returned even heavier. "This is a waste of time."

"Your idea. You got something better to do?"

_Actually, yes. Sit on my couch and count the things I miss about 2008 until the people in the telly programmes start talking to me again._

* * *

"I wonder how those two berks are getting on. Probably making cheese and pickled onion sandwiches up in that junkie's flat."

She turned on him. "If you don't trust them, why did you send them off together?" A challenge – _say something_, she thought. _Put yourself out there just a bit, Gene_.

But no, he just stood in those shadows and she could merely see the glint from his eyes as he slowly shifted his gaze from her to the field beyond. There was nothing out there. She had that sensation of overwhelming weariness that came when the night was drawing to a close and she'd had no sleep.

Time was just drifting, crawling, slowing. She couldn't bear to look at her watch again.

One solitary unbroken light buzzed to life at the end of the underpass. Underpass. Underpass. It reminded her of the line from that Smiths song she'd loved at school.

_And in the darkened underpass, I thought oh god, my chance has come at last._

_And then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn't ask.

* * *

_

Alex paced in front of him, shivering in the intensifying cold. It was so off... off that he seemed to radiate warmth and she couldn't get any closer without the fear he'd take it the wrong way. She thought about asking him about that woman, the one he was meant to be shagging right now if Ray's innuendo was remotely true.

How symmetrical that would be – _the last time we spent this much time together, in the vault in Edgehampton, he asked me about Evan._ There in that dark, choking space - so much blacker than this - she'd never felt so violently hot in her life and yet she'd sunk against his chest, stirred by his hand on the flesh of her arm. Now she didn't dare to get close.

"Want my coat?

"No, this jacket's quite warm." She hated these sorts of moments, the ones that reminded her that actually there was a good reason why she worked for Hunt, why he was the DCI.

"Oh well." He took the coat off anyway and held it out. She accepted silently, put the coat around her shoulders, so big that she felt ten feet tall and hulking in it. Now he was the one walking to and fro to keep the cold at bay.

"Creeps in this petty pace from day to day," Alex murmured.

"Eh?'

"You pacing there. I was just recalling something that the dead men's girlfriend said ... It's a quote from MacBeth." She cocked her head – might as well throw out some banter if they were stuck here until day break. "You know MacBeth?"

"You might not believe it, Bolly, but I saw it live once with the Royal Shakespeare Company in York. A bunch of us charity case kids got sent over to see it on a bus."

"And it changed your life?"

"Yes," he breathed in. "I got sent home for throwing a hot water bottle from the hotel room onto some old man's head. The policeman who came to investigate told me I was a bad lad and headed to Strangeways. He said he was never mistaken about a criminal face."

* * *

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, until the last syllable of recorded time. _Oh god, she really wasn't cheering herself up. _I must snap out of this._

Huh? She looked up, sensing a shift as someone crossed the light behind them. Two figures jumped half of the path from the road and approached through the tunnel. Nobody had a good reason for being out at this deep time of the morning.

"Got a plan," Hunt said with weird enthusiasm. As the two figures came nearer, he crushed into Alex – his force all but moulding her against the curved tunnel wall before she could protest. He kissed her, darting in quick with the peculiar advantage of knowing they were being watched. It was a rough kiss, like two teenagers, desperate and fearful. It was embarrassing even, because he really was pressing his thighs against her, and it felt like a jolt to them both when she kissed him back, shutting her eyes, opening her mouth. His hands soon reached inside his own coat - she could sense that he was uncertain where to touch first. He clasped a hand to her side.

The two figures paused right behind them, assessing them.

Alex freed a hand and lifted it to his hair, tugging on a dirty blonde lock and pulling him in closer, his mouth closer into her. Closer? His arms locked about her waist now, and in his insistence she couldn't turn her head away.

"Give her one for me, awight?"

Both the passers-by laughed raucously and walked on, leaving them once again in sole possession of the underpass.

As they jerked apart and she panted Hunt quickly caught a tendril of her hair between two fingers. Let it go equally quickly too (maybe she imagined that bit). She shoved him further away and said quietly to the wall, "Thank you, psyche, for throwing up the biggest cliché of all."

Gene frowned and looking down – looking away. It was an odd moment because there was no chance they'd come back together and kiss again, and she could see his relief when Chris and Ray hurried up not too long after.

"Did those two arseholes give you any trouble?" Ray shouted, his voice reverberating through the tunnel.

"No!" Alex exclaimed, her voice catching. "No trouble. We had 'em fooled." She stalked out onto the field. _I give up_, she said to the night sky. _This has turned into a farce._

Behind her Hunt asked calmly if anyone else had been about.

"Only a sad little old tramp," Chris was saying. "He was poking about, probably looking for a place to sleep. Had one arm all caught up in a dirty sling. Think he was nursing a bottle of meths in there. We showed him that daft surveillance position behind the pillar that you found, Ma'am, and he seemed pretty happy. My stomach hurts. Do you think that pizza-" He finally connected the silence. "What?"

"And could you by chance lead us back to this sad old tramp's new bedroom, Christopher?"

* * *

"The discovery of a piece of parchment containing a new original Shakespearean sonnet is being described as the literary discovery of the century." The evening news reader was using the most dignified voice possible, a voice for moments of national importance.

All those still in CID before the night shift arrived leaned closer into the television set, proud of themselves.

"The parchment is believed to be connected to a murder investigation currently being conducted by the London Metropolitan Police near the Bathurst Estate, East End. Police Chief Superintendant Anthony Paulson today could not confirm..."

"Hurray for CID!" Alex laughed as she shifted to make room for Shaz on Ray's desk. She nudged her, mouthing "well done to you".

Behind them the door slammed and Hunt approached. "Just got off the phone with the Super. **He's** been getting a right bollocking from the Commissioner, and he passed on the Commissioner's exact words. 'What the hell are those idiots at CID doing to find out who committed those murders?'"

"What do you mean?" Ray switched the television off. "We find some amazing bit of paper with the world's greatest poem written on it and they give us grief?"

"Is the Super upset because we couldn't find that tramp?" Chris asked.

"Yes, Christopher. I explained that we had leads up to our arses, but the Super was dead unchuffed that he was hearing about our discovery on the television. He was still confused about it being just some problem on the 'Shakespeare Estates' that exists only in his mind. And come to think, I'm confused too. Why on bloody god's **green earth **does my cleaner know more about this than I do? She just told me that it's a previously unknown sonnet, whatever that is, and she can't wait to bloody read it!"

He'd turned to Alex in that slow, stare-down dramatic way he had. "And you've been sitting on your big bum all day, haven't you? We're supposed to have the word on that poem back from Dr what's-her-name."

Alex sighed. "Maybe Dr Bade tried to contact us when we were out."

"She didn't," Viv confirmed.

"Yeah well obviously she didn't have time to call the police back because she's been talking to the papers and the nice people on the television." He gave her a 'you're going to fix this' look and pushed past Biro to get to his office.

* * *

"You have to understand, once I had time to examine it I knew that this could not be contained. I **had **to talk with my colleagues because it's just so big, you see! This has turned our department into a madhouse. I suspected word would leak out, and in many ways it's gratifying that people care so much. But it's bigger than I imagined. An undiscovered sonnet. We think written to the Dark Lady figure in the sonnets."

Dr Bade paused, and Hunt guessed he was meant to be impressed by this revelation. Bade held up a page of her book of sonnets and showed him an example. "It's pretty heady stuff. Shakespeare was in sexual thrall to this mysterious person, the Dark Lady. This new poem is even more tortured, more longing and more self-disgusted as the poet portrays himself as a balding, middle-aged man enclasped in a sexual trap, so terrible in its ambiguity."

She was clearly agitated and her glasses shook off her nose. "No one has ever been able to confirm the Dark Lady's identity. She might have been Italian or African yes. This poem might help us give a definitive answer, you never know. You have no idea, this will revolutionise all our work! Alfred Sable … he's risen from his sickbed to ensure we identify it properly. None of us can get any sleep and I can-"

"Well all that can wait." Hunt held out his hand, palm up. "C'mon. We need it back for evidence."

Dr Bade left the room and he and Drake leaned back against her desk. Hunt bumped her his with his elbow. "You know Bolly, it's disgusting, but the way she was talking right there … gave me the horn."

* * *

Hunt pushed aside the unkempt man in their path back to reception. "Watch yourself."

They were a few feet on when the man called out, "No I want a word with you." He limped over to them, a more than slightly ludicrous figure in his patched blue blazer and un-ironed grey flannel trousers. Hunt noted his salt-and-pepper beard had been newly clipped, but not well. Someone had obviously just grabbed the beard and sliced straight through it. Had he not looked in a mirror lately?

"You cannot take that parchment out of these premises; it's out of the question."

"Oh Professor Sable." Barbara Bade gripped his elbow. "I'm afraid we have to do as these police officers requested." She handed the parchment in its plastic evidence bag back to the DCI.

"I can't imagine why you two need this parchment," Sable persisted.

"For a murder enquiry, sir," Alex explained patiently. "You haven't heard the news? This find is connected to two suspicious deaths near Bathurst Estate towers."

Nothing conciliatory registered in the professor's eyes. But he changed tone. "How did you come across it?"

"Our enquiries-" She was interrupted.

"What happened to your arm?" Hunt asked. He motioned to the man's left arm, which sat in a sling under his jacket.

"I broke it falling from a ladder," the man replied. "I don't want to be a nuisance, but I want your word that you will work exclusively with me and my colleagues on this find."

"As soon as this murder case is closed, I will do whatever my superiors tell me to do with this bit of paper," Hunt replied. "If my superiors want me to cut a chain of paper dolls with it that's what I'll do. Alright, don't fret. We've got loads to do yet on this case. People to talk to, scenes to examine. Haven't got around to having a good look through the victims' homes yet so I haven't yet called Christie's about flogging it off. Joke. That's a joke."

Professor Sable took one last look at the parchment, as Hunt waved it carelessly in front of his face. "Please be careful. It's the discovery of my lifetime."

* * *

"Broken arm. Looks like five different kinds of shit. Bloody liar."

"Yes I suppose." Alex had her hand on the car door, thoughtful. "Why didn't you ask them if they knew Philip Ridley-Parwit? They must have, because he studied Shakespeare in their department."

"I don't need to, Bolly. We told Professor Ferret there that we hadn't done a scene examination of that student's flat yet. If he's the same 'tramp' that Skelton and Carling saw he could have been the one who arsed up Ridley-whatsit's flat."

"What do you think the whole chopped-off beard was all about?"

"Dunno." Hunt felt around his coat for his packet of cigarettes. "But, have you ever seen an old man so lit up?"

"Telling him CID's forensic testing would probably destroy the parchment didn't help."

He ignored her. "That is one motivated individual."


	7. Chapter 7

_**VII**_

The door to Ridley-Parwit's flat was open just as Hunt and Alex had left it.

Hunt had sent Ray to follow Alfred Sable, and Carling had radioed shortly after half-past eight that the professor was driving home from King's College. At eleven he'd radioed again. "He's in his car and I think he's heading out towards the Estate."

"Yeah, that's the tramp!" Chris whispered excitedly as he and Alex leaned over the balcony in front of Ridley-Parwit's front door and looked down into the Bathurst Estate carparks. Sable left his car and they watched him go over to the untidy collection of rubbish bins next to the second Bathurst tower's emergency exit. He picked carefully through two of the bins, occasionally finding empty plastic bags, which he scrunched into his blazer pockets.

_You're worried you left evidence of your last visit up here_, Alex thought. Hunt had suggested as much that afternoon after seeing Sable in King's College English department. And it had occurred to her that the professor had cut his beard off so hastily and inexpertly in a panic. Tormented that he'd left great salt and pepper beard hairs in the junkie's flat.

"Oh shit, he's coming up!" Chris gestured to Ray, who panted as he left the stairwell and ran towards them. They stumbled into the flat, Chris and Ray fighting to get into the bedroom.

Alex knelt down behind the old springy couch in the lounge. God knows where Hunt was. He'd stepped out for a cigarette half an hour ago.

She heard the front door close. Nobody entered the lounge. There was no sound except Ray and Chris whispering in the bedroom. It seemed like Sable was taking ages in the hall. _God, I hope the professor's deaf. _

Finally Sable came into the lounge, sighing at the tumbling mess of books on the floor. _Well you did that,_ Alex thought irritably.

"You see, you mustn't destroy anything," he said.

Alex stopped breathing.

"I suppose you are there, Mr Hunt."

"I am now." Hunt entered the flat and came into the lounge, casual but steadily advancing on the man. _Least threatening nick ever_, Alex thought as she stood up. But no, Sable turned away a little and pulled a gun from his trouser pocket. Held it out to them, wearily, unsteadily.

"There's no way you can cover up for yourself now," Hunt said. "I lied before. Forensics have been through here with a fine-tooth comb."

Sable ignored him and Chris and Ray as they came out of the bedroom: he bent down to examine a ragged copy of _Troilus and Cressida_. "I didn't come here to cover up my part in this mess." He threw the book down, picked up another. "That little pretender stole from me." His eyes were almost black as he glanced up at Alex for one second. "I'm here because I must have what is **mine **returned to **me**. And it is here somewhere."

"We think you committed a murder," Alex said, stepping towards him. "It was you, wasn't it? You were down there on the field and you shot Delbert Blyth."

"I came to collect what was mine," he said precisely, whispery hands skimming through the pages. "I sold my car in the morning and then I agreed to meet Philip to collect my manuscript. Of course, all he wanted to do was run off and spend the money on his filthy addiction."

"So you ransacked his flat," Hunt said. "Found nothing though, did you?"

"Nothing."

"How did you end up shooting Delbert?"

Sable sat down with difficulty on the low-slung couch. "I'd seen where Philip was off to so I went down to the field. I suspected he'd hidden the manuscript there. He wanted everything his own way. Always did. When he was my research assistant he never could be told or asked to do a task. Maddening."

"I'll bet."

"I found those pages in the Bodleian Library three weeks ago." His face was growing red and soggy with tears. "I could barely believe it. After a lifetime's searching, there they were glued between the pages of an eighteenth century book on angling, waiting for me."

"Pages? There's more?" Alex asked.

"They were waiting ... yes, one more sonnet. You have found it?" He half rose as if he could have sprung at her, despite Hunt's caution. "No? The thing is … I never got to read them. I just had them in my office and I wanted time to think about how marvellous it would be, the most marvellous thing in my life, when I did finally read them. They are real, you know … I knew Philip was still breaking into offices around the college, and I should have hidden them better."

Hunt glared her way. "Anyway. Back to the killings."

"Yes."

"You shot Delbert?"

"The black man? Yes. I can't remember the sequence exactly. Philip had already obviously taken the drugs he bought with my money, and he shot his pistol into the air. He was laughing. I don't know why the other man was there. He fired on Philip and I just reacted. I shot straight away but missed. Then he turned on me. He caught me on the side of the arm."

"You still got him though."

"Yes. I knelt down to steady myself and I fired my pistol on him. I may look like a man of letters, but I served in the army and I can shoot as well as any of you."

"You blew half his face off," Ray said consolingly.

"Can we dispense with this then? It's not important" Sable stood. "I have told you everything. Now, please help me find that missing page. They are my life's work."

* * *

"Awww, you should have helped him find his other poem," Shaz said as Ray recounted Professor Sable's confession later in the morning.

"I did sign his cast after we arrested him," Chris laughed. "I felt a bit sorry for him. He didn't seem to care that he was likely going to the nick. If we walled him up in that junkie flat as his punishment he could go on til the end of time looking for his poems and re-growing his beard."

His radio crackled and Viv whistled a 'hey-up' as he put his head around the office doors. "A boy just found another body out on Bathurst Estate."

* * *

Philip Ridley-Parwit's girl couldn't have known the exact spot where he died but she lay pretty close to it, hunched over on her side and her head facing the sky, the needle still sticking in her straight arm and her fingers gripping the needle.

Alex paused to look into her face – her strong black eye make-up dissolving down into rivulets of water or tears down her cheeks. Then she looked around to see if the boy who had found her was okay. Quite a crowd had gathered at the edge of the cordoned-off scene, and people were leaning out windows in the Estate towers in the distance, smoking and exchanging gossip.

"Plods've been interviewing all these hangers-about." Ray stepped over to her. "Some were here before the boy found her body. They're treasure hunting, think that there must be more poems and plays scattered about this dump. Bet some of them will be bloody making up their own sonnets and spilling tea all over them. Fat chance – that bloke over there couldn't spell his own last name."

"We're a nation of literature lovers." Alex's head hurt when Ray talked. "Yes, I guess people will be digging up fake sonnets in this field for years. Poor Dr Bade. She's going to be pestered night and day to authenticate them."

"Maybe that Professor tramp-beard can do it in the nick."

Hunt came over, knelt down over the body, hands running through his hair. "Wait up. Has Gilbert done his stuff yet?"

"He left half an hour ago," Alex said. "Said there wasn't much to tell … she overdosed on purpose or she managed to find some of her boyfriend's gear and didn't know how powerful it was. He's going to let us know any toxicological outcomes as soon as possible."

"Good." Hunt wasted no more time, and pushed the dead girl onto her back. Under her, she'd concealed a white foolscap envelope. He yelled at Chris for some rubber gloves, quickly strapped them over his hands and opened the envelope.

"What is it, Guv?"

"What?" Alex felt like kicking him. He wasn't saying anything. She went to bend down but he shook his head.

"A letter. From Philip Ridley-Parwit – same hand-writing as he scrawled across his lounge wall." Roughly he read out the two lines in the letter. _"Angela … I couldn't write you a sonnet, but I destroyed one for you."_

Hunt peered into the bottom of the envelope and shook it. "Fucking hell!" Glared up at Alex. "It's just ashes."

* * *

Viv handed her mail across the front desk as she arrived for the evening shift the next day, smiled as she looked through the envelopes without interest.

"This poem is pretty amazing, isn't it, ma'am?" He pointed to the Evening Standard on the desk before him. "With all the rioting and economy and all, people need a lift, and this is like a boost to all our egos. We found it."

"_Greensleeves_, Cornish pasties, _Oh England, my lionheart_," she laughed. Viv actually understood, unlike the rest of the Manchester City mob in there. "Viv, I bet you've actually read Shakespeare's sonnets, haven't you?"

"Well I probably will now, or at least pretend to like the rest of the country. Now I'm off soon. Have a good night, ma'am."

_I might well do that_, Alex thought as she pushed the office doors open. The checker-board lights flickered – the grid on the blink again – and no one was around except Hunt in his office with the door closed. Obviously on the phone to the Super because she could tell he was actually listening without interruption, twisting around in his chair every few minutes, looking pained.

"All well with our betters?" she asked, popping her head around the door when she heard him put down the phone and the inevitable "don't fucking mention it, sir".

Hunt looked up. "Paulson's ropeable, but he's pretty sure word may not get out about that dead cretin burning the other poem. Said he's more of a Keats man anyway."

"And a golfer," Alex reminded him, and thought the hint of a smile creased his cheek. But it seemed they had no more to say to each other tonight and she made to leave.

"Wait up." He stood up and shook the bottle of Scotch at her, poured her a glass. "I've been looking into this Shakespearean stuff, Bolls."

"Not you too."

"Some of it's filthy."

_Oh_?

Hunt pulled a paperback out of his drawer and found a page he'd marked. It was a copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream._ He frowned as he read, "'And the imperial votaress passed on, in maiden meditation, fancy-free.'"

Alex laughed delightedly. "**Very **filthy."

"Anyway, what is an 'imperial votaress'?" He came closer to place the glass in her hand.

"In this context, I think you'll find," – she made a face because Hunt was humouring her, all the while making that 'you really are a know-it-all tart' face – "as well as alluding to the virgin status of Queen Elizabeth the First it refers to Diana, or Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Cupid shoots his arrows of love, but she remains fancy-free, untouched by them."

"Artemis. Hmmm..." He rocked back on his heels as Viv knocked on the door.

"Guv, your lady friend's at reception. Apparently you're now late for dinner or something."

After a few seconds Hunt shrugged and picked up his coat.

"Another mysterious lady. If not a dark one," Alex said calmly, smilingly.

"No mystery there, Bolls." Hunt reached around her for his car-keys. They had never said anything about the underpass and she now felt that he was playing a game with her. "Her name's Lorna and she manages the dry-cleaners on my corner." Shifted on his feet. "She takes care of my suits. Likes to cook, plays tennis. Who'd have thought?"

"Oh." It was strange. He made to go, but she rushed out with, "Isn't your interest piqued by that professor's discovery, Gene? You don't want to read the sonnets, find more about the mysterious Dark Lady like everybody else in England?"

Hunt lifted his head in that way that signalled an enjoyment of the effect he could occasionally have on her. "I have one of those already. I don't need another one."

Then he ushered her abruptly out of the office.

* * *

_Night, Bolly._ Hunt watched through the window blinds as she unzipped her white jacket and slung it over the back of her chair. Even though Lorna was waiting out there in reception with the early evening's taking-in of blaggers and drunks, he stood for a minute looking into the glass of Scotch she'd put down.

Oh well. He opened the drawer and put his copy of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ on top of the Artemis file, locking them both away.

**end**

**Hi, hoped you liked the story. The next in the series is Playing with the Big Boys.**


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